Game of Thrones Season Three Episodes to Run Longer

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that episodes for the third season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” will run a few minutes longer compared to the first two seasons.

The magazine says: With showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss tackling content from the first half (roughly) of author George R.R. Martins largest Song of Ice and Fire novel (the 973-page fan-favorite A Storm of Swords), the writer-producer duo are delivering slightly longer episodes to the network. Theres still 10, but youll get a little more each week than previous seasons.

There’s almost another full episode’s worth of extra minutes spread across the season, Weiss says. One of the great liberties with HBO is we’re not forced to come in at a specific time. We cant be under 50 minutes or over 60, but that gives us a lot of flexibility.”

“A super-sized season, as befitting Storm of Swords,” Benioff adds. “Last year we had a lot of 52-minute episodes. This year is a lot of 56, 57.”

The magazine says that the third season finale is expected to run more than an hour.

The third season will premiere on HBO on March 31, 2013. You can check out a new behind-the-scenes video on the Art Direction below!